Why are school systems structured differently across countries? The Politics of Comprehensive School Reform examines this question through an in-depth analysis of school politics in Germany and Norway during the post-war period of educational expansion. Using a Rokkanian theoretical framework, the book argues that school politics can only be understood in light of the cleavages, or political divides, that shape actors' interests, ideologies, and inclinations for who they want to cooperate with – or not. The book analyzes cross-cutting cleavages connected to religion, geography, language, anticommunism, and gender, and demonstrates how Norwegian social democrats and German Christian democrats built successful coalitions by mobilizing support from different social groups. Extensively researched and expansively applicable, this book contributes to the interdisciplinary literature on the politics of education, and to the field of comparative welfare and education regime research. This book is also available Open Access on Cambridge Core.

‘This book is a masterful account of how political forces have a lasting impact on the development trajectories of secondary school systems. Adopting a framework rooted in Rokkanian cleavage theory, Katharina Sass carefully reconstructs the historical processes that put Norway and Germany on different policy trajectories. Her contribution will fundamentally influence the way we think about the politics of education.’

Marius R. Busemeyer - University of Konstanz, author of Skills and Inequality

‘Katharina Sass makes an important contribution to the growing body of comparative education research from historical sociologists and political scientists. Drawing on theories about social and political cleavages and coalitions from the latter, and her own meticulous historical research (supported by interviews with key political actors in North Rhine Westphalia), she provides a convincing account of why, during the three pivotal decades after WW2, advocates for comprehensive education reform in Norway were so much more successful than those in Germany. Her key contribution, on this question and more generally, is to demonstrate that historical analyses of political settlements must consider not only class structures and alliances around the particular policy issue in question, but how political party coalitions are successfully forged around other cross-cutting and overlapping cleavages concerning centre-periphery, rural-urban, gender and state-church relationships. Despite the complexity of the subject, the argument is admirably clear and the book very readable.’

Andy Green - University College London, author of Education and State

‘It is the merit of the book that the reform processes in Norway and Germany have been investigated by a high-qualitative comparative and theoretically driven research design. The study provides an important contribution to the research field on school politics covering two cases over a long historical period.’

Rita Nikolai - University Augsburg

‘A very accomplished book which adds to the sum of knowledge about, and understanding of, the way in which cleavages and coalitions are expressed in the politics of comprehensive education. This is not a narrow specialism within the study of education policy but a central aspect of the subject, which should be read with pleasure and profit by undergraduates and researchers in the field.’

Susanne Wiborg - author of Education and Social Integration